300 convicts affected by GPS switch

Roughly 300 convicts need to be moved from one GPS tracking company to another before October after officials said they found their current contractor allowed more than a dozen convicts to go untracked for days.

Officials with the county's Probation Department said the current contractor, Sentinel Offender Services of Irvine, failed to notify them when the electronic monitoring units of more than a dozen convicts stopped providing their location. At least five people were not tracked for more than 20 days, and one person forbidden from drinking failed alcohol tests more than 80 times without authorities being notified.

Chief Probation Officer Steven Sentman called the security lapses "unacceptable" and "a risk to public safety" in a letter sent to the company's president, Robert Contestabile, last week.

In the same letter, Sentman provided a 60-day notice to terminate the contract with the company.

The county is expected to levy $43,200 in fees against Sentinel Offender Services after a review of 14 cases chosen at random found convicts had gone unsupervised a total of 309 days, according to documents obtained by the Orange County Register.

Probation officials must now develop a plan to transition about 300 convicts under electronic supervision to a different company before Sept. 30, when the contract with Sentinel Offender Services is to be terminated, said Bryan Prieto, chief deputy probation officer.

"Just the transition itself is going to be a challenge," Prieto said.

SAN CLEMENTE COMPANY

Officials are already in negotiations with a San Clemente company, Corrective Solutions, to possibly take over, he said.

A plan to transition participants in the program to another company, and a new contract, will have to be approved by the Board of Supervisors before it is put in place, Prieto said.

In the meantime, probation officials and the two companies are working on a plan to smoothly transition the 300 convicts without interrupting their tracking, or needing to incarcerate them in county jail.

Under their agreement with Sentinel Offender Services, about 300 convicted adults were to be supervised with GPS units. Participants, after being evaluated for risk and likelihood of reoffending, are allowed to do electronic monitoring instead of being housed in county jail.

Local law enforcement agencies across the state expanded their use of GPS monitoring as the population in county jails has steadily increased. After the state implemented a prison reform plan known as realignment, the responsibility of housing and supervising thousands of convicts that would have been previously under state officials has fallen into county hands.

RELYING ON GPS MORE

Local authorities have looked to GPS units for lower-security inmates in order to manage their jail populations.

Under their contract with the county's Probation Department, participants in the program pay a fee – based on their income – to participate in the GPS monitoring in lieu of serving time in jail. Participants are first evaluated for eligibility.

According to a county report, the company was expected to collect $1,892,208 during the 2012-13 fiscal year, resulting in $719,039 for the county.

According to the website for Sentinel Offender Services, the company has worked with the county in some capacity since 1993. Its contract had been extended for another year in May, but came into question a month later when Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer questioned the results of a county audit.